dota-2 posts

Valve is currently working on two already announced games; Portal 2, due out next month and DOTA 2, due out sometime in 2011. But Valve is likely working on other games as well. During a recent visit to the game developer's offices, a Team Fortress 2 community member, "Political Gamer" took some photos of what he saw and posted links on the Steam message boards.

One photo was an image of some concept artwork on a wall that, well, doesn't look like anything we have seen before. It doesn't appear to fit with either Portal 2 or DOTA 2. Perhaps it's something akin to the long awaited Half-Life 2: Episode 3? "Political Gamer" posts later in the message board thread that, "those pictures are just some art done by people at Valve." But they clearly seems to be for game development. So let the speculation begin.

The funny Team Fortress 2 videos have showcased all but two of the multiplayer shooter's character classes; the Medic and the Pyro are the only two left. In a new post on the Steam message board posts by Team Fortress 2 community member "Political Gamer", he claims that during a visit to Valve's offices this week that the Medic will be the next TF2 class to get the trailer spotlight.

The report claims that the video is one of the best of the TF2 character classes yet made and that it is about 80 to 90 percent done so it should be released "soon". In related news the Source Engine film maker will also be released "soon", according to the report.

The report also has a audio link to an interview with Team Fortress' co-creator Robin Walker that should be of interest to Team Fortress 2 fans. The same report praises Valve's next game Portal 2 quite a bit (GOTY 2011 is mentioned) and even mentions being able to see DOTA 2 being played (no details, however).

Both the original Counter-Strike and its graphical remake Counter-Strike Source remain two of the most popular PC multiplayer shooters worldwide. So it's natural to ask the head of the game's developer, Valve's Gabe Newell, about a possible follow-up to those games.

In the above video, taken last week during the CeBIT PC trade show in Germany, the host of the presentation asked Newell flat out when Valve will release Counter-Strike 2. Newell was clearly caught off guard by the question and dodged it, stating that Valve still has two upcoming games to release (Portal 2 and DOTA 2). He didn't deny that Counter-Strike 2 was being made, though, but knowing Valve it may be a long time before they officially announce anything about it.

It's been over two months since Valve officially announced its plans to release DOTA 2, the stand alone action-RTS sequel-remake to the popular Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients. Since then there's been no direct info from Valve about the game (even its official web site hasn't been updated since November 1) but this week IGN got Valve's Erik Johnson to talk more about DOTA 2.

Johnson says that fans of the original mod shouldn't worry about the main gameplay design of DOTA 2, saying, "We'd be pretty hard-pressed to improve on that." The article claims that Valve is concentrating on "infrastructure, art, and providing helpful tools to newcomers so they can figure out what's going on." There's even an attempt to create a fictional back story for the game's heroes with Johnson saying, "In the game there are heroes that fictionally have a relationship with each other so from time to time they may say something to someone else that's kind of one-off." DOTA 2 is still planned for release sometime in 2011.

The PC gaming genre has gotten a second look by many developers and publishers in the past year and part of the reason is the success of Valve's Steam PC game download service. In a new chat with Develop, Valve's head man Gabe Newell is quoted as saying that he is "tremendously excited about the future of PC gaming."

He added that he considers the PC platform to be a center of game development innovation "... of everything that's going on, whether it's microtransactions, MMOs, free-to-play, or something like (Zynga's Facebook game) CityVille which – after its first month – has 84 million people playing. To us, this is just an indication of why open platforms are where innovations are going to occur."

Valve has certainly been a part of that innovative PC game platform with both Steam and its Steamworks game development tools being used by more and more game developers and publishers. It has two PC games due out in 2011, the puzzle-shooter sequel Portal 2 and the action-RTS remake DOTA 2.

While first person shooters, action games and role playing games can cross over from the PC to consoles, strategy games are still mostly on the PC side of things. 2010 brought us some big strategy game releases such as Civilization V and most notably StarCraft II Wings of Liberty. 2011 also has some major turn and RTS based strategy games on tap for release including the latest in a long line of historical RTSs, the return of a major turn based fantasy strategy series and even the latest attempt at an MMO RTS game.

Big Download has picked 10 upcoming strategy PC games that we can't wait to play (in order of their expected release dates) in the next year as part of our multi-part feature on the games of 2011. You can also go back and check out our previous entries on the first person shooter, action and RPG-MMO genres.

A few weeks after its official reveal, Valve has now launched its official web site for DOTA 2. There's still no official screenshots of this upcoming remake of the Defense of the Ancients mod but the site does feature a Q&A with answers provided by the mysterious "IceFrog."

Some of the questions deal with spectating in matches, how the new game will handle online lag, if there will be a beta test (in short, yes) and more. One question that Valve has yet to address publicly is the issue of the company trying to secure the trademark for DOTA 2 which is an issue of contention with former Defense of the Ancients developers as well as Blizzard who made the game (Warcraft III) which was used as the basis of the original DOTA game.

You can add Blizzard VP Rob Pardo to the list of folks who don't care for Valve's attempt to trademark the use of the name DOTA for Valve's upcoming game DOTA 2. In a chat with Eurogamer at BlizzCon, Pardo stated, "Valve is usually so pro mod community. It's such a community company that it just seems like a really strange move to us... I really don't understand why [they would do it], to be honest."

Valve first filed a trademark for use of the name DOTA earlier this summer. In October, Valve announced that it would release DOTA 2, a stand alone graphical remake of the original Defense of the Ancients mod that was first made for Blizzard's RTS game Warcraft III. Pardo stated, "To us, that means that you're really taking it away from the Blizzard and Warcraft III community and that just doesn't seem the right thing to do." Valve has yet to comment on the DOTA trademark controversy. Blizzard, however, is still planning to release Blizzard DOTA, an upcoming custom map for StarCraft II. Pardo says that if Valve tries to contest the use of DOTA for the StarCrat II map he states, "Our contention is that it should continue to be available to Blizzard and to our community."

As promised, Valve has announced their plans for a stand alone sequel to the popular Warcraft III fantasy RTS mod Defense of the Ancients. The game is called DOTA 2 and is due out for PC and Mac in 2011. That means Valve will actually be releasing two stand alone commercial games in 2011 (Portal 2 is due out in February).

Game Informer's web site has the first details on DOTA 2 (the web site, as of this writing, is super slow due no doubt to high traffic). Basically the core gameplay behind the original mod version of DOTA will remain the same but it will be using a more advanced version of Valve's Source Engine with improved lighting and support for more realistic cloth animations. There will also be AI bots for skirmishes and training. Valve will also put in community features that will let players get in-game bonuses for things like participating in the game's official forums and there are also plans to allow veteran players to coach less experience players in some way. You can also expect DOTA 2 to be constantly updated with new content much like Valve's Team Fortress 2.